Should the UK see the current global and domesticv financial turmoil problems as the clinching reason join the Eurozone? No: The reason for having a floating exchange rate is that it should float. In an uncertain world, an economy needs mechanisms of adjustment. The exchange rate is the most powerful […]
A reader asks: Do you approve of the current US and UK policy to appease nationalist Albanian threats of violence? There may be people out there who do not follow the Kosovo problem with close attention. Just to remind them that the long-running attempt to the EU’s bright young Laura […]
You have to doff the cap to some of the Guardian’s leading columnists. They come out day after day, whirling their delicate arms in a pugnacious defiant way, only to be knocked flat on to the floor by Tim Worstall: As we’re all surveying the rubble we’re agreeing that the root […]
As world leaders grapple with rival ideas for tackling the global financial crisis, keep an aghast eye on what the EU under France is up to in redefining European security. President Sarkozy and President Medvedev have come up with a proposal to hold a major OSCE summit in mid-2009 aimed at […]
Russia, says the Guardian, is opting for a charm offensive to try to see off the deployment of sophisticated US missile defence systems in Poland and Czech Republic. It did not take long for the Obama team to encounter the complexities of Poland and points East: President-elect Obama has spoken […]
Lots of gracious congratulations coming to Barack Obama from conservative commentators/pundits, including this one. And this. But, heck, you can’t please everyone. As ever, Mark Steyn nails it: I think we are near a point at which America joins the rest of the west as a center-left society — that’s […]
And here is Edward Lucas castigating the latest EU signs of ‘moving on’ following the Russian dismemberment of Georgia, not least the UK position: Britain’s decision to allow France to lead the European Union back into normal relations with Vladimir Putin’s ex-KGB regime in Russia is one of the most […]
Lord Ashdown and Richard Holbrooke have penned a long joint letter to the Guardian warning about the risks of the international community taking its eye off the Bosnia problem. They focus on what they see as the basic aim of Republika Srpska PM Milorad Dodik: His long-term policy seems clear: to place his […]
In Brussels this week my hotel gave me a free copy of New Europe, a weekly European newspaper with a lively web presence. See eg my former colleague Sir Stephen Wall on whether Britain (sic) is a European nation. No surprise at his answer (Stephen was HM Ambassador to the […]
I venture to Brussels tomorrow on Eurostar from St Pancras. I hope not to endure the agony which Tim Worstall suffered recently. Odd how so many things in principle are both more flexible and inflexible simultaneously, for no evident reason?
